CDC’s tools for tracking COVID spread on airplanes outdated: U.S. watchdog

A U.S. government watchdog says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is using outdated tools to track how COVID-19 spreads on airplanes, impacting the health agency’s ability to prevent future outbreaks.

In a report released Monday (July 11), the U.S.-based Government Accountability Office (GAO) argued that the CDC’s tools were old, slow and prone to issues.

The “CDC is not positioned to efficiently analyze and disseminate data to inform public health policies and respond to disease threats,” the GAO wrote. “Nor is it positioned to evaluate its performance in collecting and sharing quality passenger information.”

The criticism zeros in on how the U.S.-based CDC collects and manages air passenger contact information, which is stored in what the GAO calls “an outdated data management system.”

Manual data entry 

This system, which was developed in the mid-2000s, was not designed for rapid assessment or aggregation of public health data across individual cases, the GAO argues.

For instance: the CDC, currently, is unable to quickly and accurately identify the number of passengers exposed to a specific infected passenger on a flight, the watchdog says.

Nor does the system contain the necessary data fields to assess the quality of air passenger information CDC receives, such as a field to determine the timeliness of airlines' responses.

When tracking air passengers, many data entry tasks are done manually, and it can take the CDC as long as two weeks to collect information to address errors or gaps in data provided by airlines, according to the GAO.

By then, the information is practically obsolete, the GAO said, and the “delay can contribute to broader community spread of a disease, as potentially exposed passengers may become difficult to locate and notify, or they may become symptomatic or infectious during this time.”

Calls for more surveillance

The GAO says it conducted its study because air travel “can play a role in quickly spreading communicable diseases across the world and throughout communities.”

“Given this potential, contact tracing for air passengers is an important measure for protecting public health,” the watchdog said.

The study reviewed current federal documentation, including regulations, orders, technical guidance, and public comments, as well as available CDC data.

The GAO also interviewed officials from CDC, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Federal Aviation Administration, and selected individuals from the aviation, travel, and public health industries.

The watchdog has since made recommendations, including that the CDC redesign its data management system or deploy a new one that would allow more surveillance.

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